As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Dr. Therese Duane recently defeated a lawsuit brought against her by the family of a patient, Berman DePaz-Martinez, who died while under her care. At issue was Duane’s unilateral decision to remove DePaz-Martinez from a ventilator, which quickly caused his death as he could not breathe on his own.
While Duane and her legal team successfully argued that her actions were not intended to kill DePaz-Martinez and that she had acted within her “medical discretion,” a string of whistleblower allegations have followed, painting an alarming picture.
Duane currently works for Texas Health Services, performing surgery at Envision Surgical Services in Fort Worth; the allegations stem from her time as chief of surgery at nearby John Peter Smith (JPS) Hospital.
At the time, senior JPS staff were sent a whistleblower letter from “concerned employees from multiple disciplines” outlining nine separate instances in which patients under Duane’s care died or suffered needlessly.
One such account by the whistleblowers involved a 24-year-old male who allegedly arrived at the JPS trauma bay in critical condition after a motor vehicle collision. The young man suffered from severe blood loss and a low pulse, which reportedly improved after medical staff gave him a blood transfusion.
As the medical team scrambled to save the young man’s life, the whistleblowers claimed that Dr. Duane arrived and immediately demanded that they “stop care.” Allegedly, with the man still alive, Duane called his time of death.
However, attending staff all agreed that the patient had “the potential for survival if they [were to] cross-clamp his aorta and give him more blood.” Nevertheless, they claimed Duane refused to allow them to continue providing him care.
As Duane and other medical personnel stepped outside the trauma bay to discuss who would update the patient’s family, a nurse still inside reportedly called out, “Is he supposed to be breathing?”
The document alleged that the patient was still alive on the table at this point, breathing on his own.
“Yeah, that’s how they look when they are dead,” Duane jeered back, according to the account.
Duane then reportedly reentered the trauma bay and approached the patient. She examined him for a moment before giving clearance for the medical staff to resume care, according to the whistleblowers.
Staff then advocated for him to be taken to the operating room immediately, but they asserted that Duane ordered imaging testing done on the patient instead.
The whistleblowers maligned that Duane then allegedly “left [this] critical patient” to attend to another patient who was not in an emergency situation.
Not long after, the young auto collision victim died.
The whistleblowers also asserted that upon his death, Duane reportedly chose not to meet with his family but instead decided to “start a laparoscopic appendectomy by herself” on another patient.
Duane apparently did not use best practices, which she allegedly later admitted to staff, and the patient sustained bowel injury “which required substantial intervention [of] other surgeons.”
Other allegations in the whistleblower document further disclosed repeated instances of malpractice and potential malice.
In the case of a 23-year-old female who arrived at JPS in severe pain after complications from an abortion, Duane allegedly told staff, “You know why she is sick? She did this to herself.”
Duane then reportedly refused to send the young woman to the operating room despite the patient suffering immense pain and begging “the primary RN to not let her die.”
Many long hours later, the patient was finally sent to the operating room, where it was discovered she had dead bowel, a serious and fatal condition in which reduced blood flow to areas of the gastrointestinal tract causes necrosis.
The patient soon began to experience cardiac arrest. During resuscitative measures, the whistleblowers claimed that Duane arrived and demanded that they stop administering care, stating, “What are you doing? Stop compressions.”
After the staff stopped, they asserted that Duane walked over to the young woman, kissed her on the forehead, said a Hail Mary, and walked out of the room.
In yet another revealing allegation against Duane, whistleblowers claimed that a middle-aged man in her care was suffering from a gunshot wound and was being monitored for potential organ and tissue donation.
As his condition worsened, Duane allegedly instructed medical personnel not to intervene to save his life. She reportedly told staff that “JPS was organ hungry” and that the hospital was trying to “beat out Vanderbilt.”
Vanderbilt is the nation’s leading hospital for organ transplantation.
The document ended with an appeal for the hospital to take action.
“We can no longer stand by and condone these acts through our silence, violating the tenet of beneficence,” the whistleblowers wrote.
“We have always made it our priority to care for patients who are sick, despite their available resources … Yet, we are being asked to look the other way as the chief of surgery commits such egregious acts.”
The Dallas Express sent Duane’s current employer our initial reporting on these allegations with a series of questions for comment. As of the writing of this article, Texas Health Services had not responded.
Holy cow, I hope if I get sick I stay away from this doctor
Malpractice? Murder is more likely.
Sounds like she’s trying to look like a hero with snatching organs from patients to save other patients. This is wrong on so many levels
Dont worry China does this all the time. Not for hero status but $ status.
She was probably getting paid for organs.
Boy, God need to step in and do something about these folks killing.
I can say a couple of things. FIRST, anyone who has complained needs to make it clear to the HOSPITAL that they will NOT work UNDER that doctor for any reason at any time.
Second, the care givers (other than this Doctor) at the hospital need to send direct requests to the BOARD for direct education as to what is and illegal order by a doctor in care giving.
They need to be able to tell the doctor that this is an unlawful order and that the doctor now needs to leave the area. They need to pull in a different doctor immediately. Unlawful orders are just that.
Finally, whistle blowing to the board of the hospital creates a situation wherein the HOSPITAL must protect itself from suit. It is financial issue.
The STATE should REQUIRE that all whistle blowing in medical settings be transmitted to a state board, wherein criminal investigation is MANDATED IN EVERY CASE AND the state needs to mandate PROSECUTION if in fact laws were violated.
The statement about harvesting organs is in fact evidence of CRIMINAL MURDER by the doctor for financial and other gain, it is SELF EVIDENT. The Texas Rangers need to be investigating this and beginning prosecution and revocation of medical license.
Hospital boards must look after themselves, just as police agencies must look after themselves in internal reviews. The FOX is guarding the HEN HOUSE.
I hope John Peter Smith Hospital told Texas Health Services about these allegations and if not, JPS should be held accountable for not warning them. Texas Health Services should not have hired her and should be open to these allegations and take her off their staff. Did neither of these hospitals see The Bad Nurse where a bad nurse was just moved along from one place to another and no one warned them? Outrageous!
How would JPS know all the places among thousands where she could have been applying to work?
Our hospital in Denver just interviewed her. Then she was googled.
Wow! This woman needs to go to jail
Sadly, it takes a lot of incidents like the ones above before an MD loses their license.
Texas Tort Reform essentially guarantees the majority of doctors are untouchable. The hospital’s greed, typically assures the public never hears about situations like these, but this behavior occurs almost daily behind closed doors in health care.
This woman obviously has a God complex. Doctors investigating doctors will never have a just outcome. Cronyism at its finest.
This Woman will never touch or be involved in any of me or my family’s care
Based on the testimony of the medical staff that worked with and experienced the ineptitude and callousness that Dr. Duane exhibited on numerous occasions, it is apparent that Dr. Duane should never be allowed to practice health care on any living being.
She should be arrested! How dare she treat people like this! She should never be allowed to practice medicine for the rest of her life!!!!
What a joke of a Doctor. I would never let her around me or my family. She reminds me of Christopher Duntche aka Dr Death who is serving life in a Texas Prison.
Sad on every level, Dr needs to be fired, her license revoked!! Patients go to the hospital for care, not to be killed. She needs to be accountable for her actions.
She should be locked up and I cannot believe that she is still practicing medicine. Sounds like to me she’s getting away with murder! People do something to get her convicted you have my vote
Thank you for reporting this doctor to us!
Funny thing is, you would have never heard anything about any of this, had the surgeon not cost the hospital money when they lost the organs for transplant. Hospitals are experts in covering up malfeasance. They do it on a daily basis in balancing the “nursing shortages” that they’re the sole cause of. Here’s a tip, there will ALWAYS be a nursing shortage because nurses salaries will always be regulated by hospitals instead of supply and demand. They’ll continue to do so until nurses go to strike nationwide, which will never happen, or advances are made in robotics to replace thinking, acting nurses with robots without opinions.
Will the Dallas Express continue with follow up investigations on this matter?